


Some Distraction Required

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, Humor, Non-Consensual Drug Use, cameos by Walid and Molly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4342673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’d dealt with plenty of people under the influence of tetrahydrocannabinol, to use the strictly technical term, during my time as a probationary constable. But none of them had been my boss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Distraction Required

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forochel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/gifts).



> Forochel commented on _Changes of Perspective_ that "If Nightingale got high I bet you he'd just be all *chinhands* at Peter as Peter is going on about quantitative measurements. "Do go on," he'd say, face propped in a hand, looking very enamoured. "Science away!"". 
> 
> And there was no way I was going to let that pass, so...here we are.

“I’m bored,” Nightingale said plaintively. I looked at him in disbelief. This was a guy who could sit patiently all night on stake-out, who could listen attentively to a meandering story and not miss a detail, who _watched rugby for fun_ , and he was complaining about boredom.

Of course, he wasn’t quite in his right mind at the moment, but was that my fault? No. No it was  _not_.

I turned to Dr Walid. “Are you seriously going to leave me alone with him?”

“Someone’s got to keep an eye on him,” said Walid, unperturbed. “I think you’ll manage. It can’t be anything you haven’t seen before.”

This was true – I’d dealt with plenty of people under the influence of tetrahydrocannabinol, to use the strictly technical term, during my time as a probationary constable. (The non-technical term, in case you’re wondering, is “stoned”.) But none of them had been my boss.

I hasten to add that this wasn’t a voluntary decision on Nightingale’s part. It was sheer bad luck that he'd opened the wrong door when we were out looking for a witness and got a serious lungful of smoke. Now, in the normal run of things that shouldn’t have been enough to do anything but make him light-headed for a minute or so, but I had a funny feeling that this wasn’t just your regular cannabis. I was minded to ask Zach about that extra-strong stuff grown underwater he’d mentioned to me once. Anyway, we hadn’t been there to find out about drugs, magical or not – although it had convinced the people we were there to talk with to start talking, once they realised we had a nice straightforward reason to arrest them.

Nightingale had gone a bit quiet during all this, and I’d wondered if something was up. Then he’d said that I’d better drive, and I’d known it. By the time we were back at the Folly he’d started smiling for no particular reason and I’d decided that calling Walid was definitely the indicated course of action. After all, like I said, one good lungful shouldn’t have had any effect, but my governor was undeniably, well. High. In the quiet, understated way that I’d have expected him to be if you’d ever asked me to speculate on this scenario. Which nobody had.

It was hilarious, I won't deny it, but it was also a bit...concerning. For starters, if things had gone slightly differently that would have been me, and for another thing, keeping control was basically what Nightingale _did_. Seeing that artificially stripped away from him seemed – disrespectful.

“I’ll be off, then,” said Walid. “I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble. You know how to call me if you need me, of course.” I think it weirded him out, too, because he absented himself _very_ quickly.

“I’ll be fine,” Nightingale reassured me in terrifyingly cheerful tones. “The last time I –“

“I do _not_ want to know about your youthful adventures with illegal substances,” I said firmly. “This is confusing enough already. Just stay here and try not to…just stay here.”

“Oh, very well,” he said, which was evidence if I needed it that he wasn’t firing on all four cylinders – normally he’d never have acquiesced to any sort of order from me without at least a dry look.

I attempted to recruit Molly to keep an eye on him, but she was in the middle of cooking dinner and just waved a hand at me impatiently. I got the distinct impression she was just about as troubled by the thought of Nightingale in a chemically altered state as I was, and didn’t want any part of it.

“Could I just leave him in here?” I tried.

Molly frowned at me. I tried again. “I mean, he’s not in danger or anything, but -”

She turned away. I sighed. There was no getting out of this, apparently.

“I’m still bored,” Nightingale said when I got back to the reading room, where I’d left him. I contemplated dragging him over to the tech cave and setting him in front of the TV – in my personal experience, that would probably keep him entertained – but also in my personal experience, the trick would be getting him over there. I wasn’t sure I was up to it. There’d probably have to be a lot of hands-on guidance. Nightingale and me weren’t really on those sort of terms, and this really wasn’t the situation in which I'd want to change that.

“How about,” I said, by way of compromise, “I’ll go and get your radio.” That seemed safe enough. He probably wouldn’t have the concentration to track whatever was on, but it couldn’t do any harm – and, in this state, there was no _way_ he was capable of forgetting about the whole magic vs. the digital radio problem and frying it. For all the myriad difficulties of Newtonian magic, the one nice thing about it is that it’s bloody difficult to do any damage by _accident_ – or do magic by accident, anyway.

“It’s just Gardeners’ Question Time,” he objected. “That’s _very_ boring.”

“You like plants,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but not gardening,” he told me, and fair enough. Whenever he sighed at me about not knowing my beeches from my birches it was about trees and wildflowers and things, not varieties of petunias or whatever – see, I do know _some_ botany. He’d never struck me as the gardening type, even if the Folly had had a garden, which it didn’t.  Just a few containers with herbs and things that Molly was deeply territorial about.

“How about you tell me how your experiment’s going,” he said, and I looked at him suspiciously.

“My experiment? You mean trying to figure out how long different metals hold different levels of _vestigia_?”

I was working on a theory about exactly _why_ some substances held _vestigia_ and some didn’t, and right now it hung on how fast they degraded. You’d think metal would be metal, but iron rusts and gold doesn’t – I was trying to figure out if there was a detectable difference between how long different kinds of metal, insomuch as I was able to get hold of different kinds of metal, held it. Iron and steel were easy, copper and brass not very difficult, I’d nicked some of the Folly’s silverware and pewter. I hadn’t been able to locate enough gold to do the test, unsurprisingly. 

“That’s the one.”

I contemplated asking if he was serious, but that didn’t seem helpful.

“Fine,” I said. “Just remember that you _asked_ about this.”

I told him what I was thinking; I told him what I’d worked out; I told him what I was planning to do next. Nightingale gave every appearance of listening intently. It was a bit unnerving.  

“Do you even understand anything I’m saying?” I broke off to ask at one point.

“Not really,” Nightingale said. He still had this sort of weird smile on his face that would have cued me something was up if I’d walked in right this second, because he never looked that ridiculous normally – I mean, he smiles, he’s not deadly serious, but this was definitely a I’m-high-and-everything-is-funny smile. “But I never really understood it when David or Walter or anyone used to go on about their latest research, either, and I haven’t the _foggiest_ what Abdul’s talking about half the time. I don’t mind. You all seem to have so much _fun_ with it.”

“Alright,” I said. “In that case, I’m going to keep going.”

He really hadn’t gotten more than a lungful or two – he had to start coming down at some point.

It wasn’t hard to tell when he did, either, because his eyes started to glaze over.

“Feeling better?” I asked.

“I – yes,” he said, and he was definitely getting the awkward look that meant his behaviour over the last hour or so was coming into normal perspective. I mumbled some excuse and got out. If it were me I’d be feeling a bit silly right now – although compared to how pretty much anyone else I knew would have behaved I thought he’d kept an extraordinary amount of dignity, under the circumstances. There hadn’t even been any giggling.

The best thing to do was going to be to show up for dinner like nothing had happened. And then never mention it again. Especially not the part where he’d actually _asked_ me to talk about science. Mentioning that would be taking advantage of having seen him in a compromised state, and that just wouldn’t be fair.

But don’t think I wasn’t going to be tempted.


End file.
